VS 2019 always crashes whenever I try to open this one solution

Question

I am tasked with maintaining an old VB.NET ASP.NET WebForms application. It has 9 projects within the solution. It is at least 15 years old, which is longer than I have been employed in this position. None of the original developers are around. They left no documentation. They didn't even put the source code into any version control system.

My PC has been experiencing major issues over the last few months. My desktop support people reimaged the PC. I've done my best to install of the development software I used to have, I believe I've done that correctly.

The original developers worked on this application over many years. They would always use whatever version of Visual Studio and .NET Framework was around, when they worked on it. Consequently, different versions of the .NET Framework starting at version 2 and going to version 4.5.2, are in this application. I asked my boss if I could settle on one .NET Framework, and his answer was a very loud, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!".

Now that my machine is reimagined I've tried to open this Visual Studio solution. VS 2019 crashes immediately after I open it, giving this error:

Log Name: Application Source: Application Error Date: 1/10/2025 1:18:14 PM Event ID: 1000 Task Category: Application Crashing Events Level: Error Keywords:
User: OURDOMAIN\Rod.Falanga Computer: MYMACHINE.ournetwork.nmsg Description: Faulting application name: devenv.exe, version: 16.11.35425.106, time stamp: 0x671bf495 Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.22621.4601, time stamp: 0xd05261a4 Exception code: 0xc000041d Fault offset: 0x0014b472 Faulting process id: 0x0x5B48 Faulting application start time: 0x0x1DB639CBA9BAE68 Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe Faulting module path: C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll Report Id: 2cf4a8b4-1c69-4719-8ce9-92ddfcfd3933 Faulting package full name: Faulting package-relative application ID: Event Xml: <Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event"> <System> <Provider Name="Application Error" Guid="{a0e9b465-b939-57d7-b27d-95d8e925ff57}" /> <EventID>1000</EventID> <Version>0</Version> <Level>2</Level> <Task>100</Task> <Opcode>0</Opcode> <Keywords>0x8000000000000000</Keywords> <TimeCreated SystemTime="2025-01-10T20:18:14.1351851Z" /> <EventRecordID>10632</EventRecordID> <Correlation /> <Execution ProcessID="17772" ThreadID="13852" /> <Channel>Application</Channel> <Computer>MYMACHINE.ournetwork.nmsg</Computer> <Security UserID="S-1-5-21-448539723-413027322-725345543-98862" /> </System> <EventData> <Data Name="AppName">devenv.exe</Data> <Data Name="AppVersion">16.11.35425.106</Data> <Data Name="AppTimeStamp">671bf495</Data> <Data Name="ModuleName">KERNELBASE.dll</Data> <Data Name="ModuleVersion">10.0.22621.4601</Data> <Data Name="ModuleTimeStamp">d05261a4</Data> <Data Name="ExceptionCode">c000041d</Data> <Data Name="FaultingOffset">0014b472</Data> <Data Name="ProcessId">0x5b48</Data> <Data Name="ProcessCreationTime">0x1db639cba9bae68</Data> <Data Name="AppPath">C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\2019\Enterprise\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe</Data> <Data Name="ModulePath">C:\WINDOWS\System32\KERNELBASE.dll</Data> <Data Name="IntegratorReportId">2cf4a8b4-1c69-4719-8ce9-92ddfcfd3933</Data> <Data Name="PackageFullName"> </Data> <Data Name="PackageRelativeAppId"> </Data> </EventData> </Event>

I've submitted this to Microsoft Feedback Hub. I'm sure I'll hear back from them, but that could be weeks or even months later. I need an answer next week. Can anyone help me, please?

Answer 1

Firstly, to be clear, your project IS NOT running on multiple frameworks at the same time. There is only 1 CLR loaded into a process and it'll be the version that the app says to use. Everything else, irrelevant of what the project says, runs on that framework. Since CLR v4 it really doesn't matter what specific 4.x version of the framework you target as they will all run on the currently installed version of the CLR v4. There can be only 1 copy of that on a machine. For example your projects may target v4.5, v4.6.1 and even v4.7. But the app project determines the "target" runtime. Suppose that is v4.7.2. Then at runtime that is what is expected to be available. This really doesn't have much impact anymore outside the development environment. Provided the host machine has at least v4.7.2 installed then your app will run fine. If a Windows Update, or user, installs v4.8.1 then that is the version your app runs against. There is nothing you can do about it and it will not really impact anything. So updating the target framework of your projects, outside the app project, has really no noticeable effect.

Of course if you're talking about pre-v4 projects then VS probably won't load them at all because anything prior to v4.0 requires the CLR v2 which was obsolete a decade ago and code targeting that version won't even run in v4, nor would it ever. So there would be no way for that situation to have occurred before anyway.

On to your actual problem. Reporting to MS is the best choice but my guess is that there is something in one of the projects that is causing a failure. Normally the project simply wouldn't load but it is possible to crash VS. To be honest the event log entry doesn't provide anything useful here. Ideally you should run VS with the /log option and then look at the log that it generates. This will provide more useful information. But even with the log it may not help you.

My gut instinct is that the projects are relying on a custom tool or library to load and it isn't available. This is especially common with COM and third party libraries. Still shouldn't crash VS though. I assume you have already confirmed you can create a new VB.NET project with the older target framework?

This is where the first thought comes in. VS does not auto-install all supported frameworks. If you attempt to load a project that uses a framework that isn't installed then VS will pop up a message offering to: install the framework, upgrade the project or unload the project. Generally you upgrade the project but installing the framework would also work provided the framework is supported by VS. Note that VS2019 supports pre-v4 framework code but only if you installed support for it. So if you have pre-v4 code then rerun the VS installer and add support for the older framework.

If that doesn't get you past the error then the next step is to narrow down the problem. You need to unload all the projects and load them back one by one. Since VS won't load the solution then this is going to be difficult so what I'd do is create a brand new empty solution, doesn't matter where. Then copy the solution file (.sln) into your existing solution directory and open it in VS. Once VS loads the empty solution then use Add -> Add Existing Project to add the projects back to the solution one by one. I would recommend doing so in order of dependencies so projects that have no other project dependencies first followed by projects dependent on those loaded next. The app would be the last project. Save after each successful load. Eventually I would expect a project to fail to load and this is where you can start troubleshooting what is going on.